Step It Up

Adapted from Life­Hacker

Stair climb­ing is a sim­ple exer­cise you can per­form any­where there is a stair­case, whether that stair­case is in your home or in pub­lic. You’ve likely seen films depict ath­letes run­ning up large stair­cases in sta­di­ums before, and this is because it’s great exer­cise. It’s espe­cially effec­tive if you skip every other step. How can you do this as a prac­ti­cal exer­cise? If you have access to a stan­dard stair­case at home, just fol­low these steps:

1. Run up and down the stair­case as many times as you can. Skip steps in-between if you can. Stop when you are so tired you can­not con­tinue any­more. When you get to this point, you mostly likely will only be part of the way up the stair­case. If you made it to the top, chances are you’ve got another climb left in you.
2. Take the total num­ber of times you made it to the the top of the stairs and cut it in half. For exam­ple, let’s say you maxed out at 20 times and that halved num­ber is 10.
3. The next time you climb stairs, run up and down 10 times each (the halved number).
4. Take a 60–90 sec­ond break, then do another set of 10 (the halved number).
5. Take another 60–90 sec­ond break, then do at least 10 (the halved num­ber). If you can do more, do more. Your goal is to push your­self until you’re too tired to go on.
6. As this gets eas­ier, increase the num­ber of times you climb the stairs per set so you’re always push­ing your­self to work harder.

Not every­one has a stair­case, how­ever, so this exer­cise isn’t always an option at home. If you don’t want to go out and use a pub­lic stair­case with reg­u­lar­ity, just add stair climb­ing to part of your every­day life. When you have the option to take the stairs, take them, and run up them skip­ping every other step. This is a good way to work in a lit­tle exer­cise to your reg­u­lar day.